A top 10 US bank, Truist Bank offers banking products and services you’d find with any large bank. It has over 2,500 branches across 16 states and over 3,000 ATMs nationwide. You’ll find a variety of accounts, including checking, savings, money market and certificates of deposit (CDs). Overall, its accounts with monthly fees offer multiple ways to waive them and minimum opening deposits range from $25 to $50 for checking and savings and at least $1,000 for CDs depending on the term. But if you’re looking for a bank with high-yield savings products, Truist’s APYs all rest around 0.01%.
Best for: Customers who want a traditional brick-and-mortar bank at the cost of low APYs.
In 2019, Suntrust and BB&T banks merged to create Truist Financial Corp — one of the largest bank mergers in the last decade. Since the merger, Truist saw an increase in loan originations and deposits. Truist also heavily invested in technology after the merger, moving its banking products on to a digital cloud platform to stay competitive with online banks.
Truist Bank is worth considering if you want a full-service bank or you’re a student looking for a low-maintenance checking account.
Its checking accounts require monthly maintenance fees, up to $12 per month, but the Truist One Checking account lets you waive it if you’re a student under the age of 25. Other fee-waiving methods involve maintaining a certain balance or opening a Truist credit card or consumer loan.
Truist’s products work best together. For example, with a Truist One Checking account, you’ll earn additional cashback rewards if you have a Truist credit card and the ability to waive its savings account monthly maintenance fee.
Truist Bank has 2,781 locations across 16 states, mainly in the midwest and south, including South Carolina, Florida, Texas and Ohio, and has more than 3,000 ATMs. Comparatively, it has more customer support options than top online banks.
Truist Bank offers standard banking services, including two checking accounts, traditional savings, CDs and money market accounts. As a whole, the accounts are solid but nothing particularly special.
Of all the products, one of the best offered is the Truist One Checking account. It has no overdraft fees, and it offers more earning potential with cashback rewards if you have a select Truist credit card.
Another unique feature of the Truist One Checking account is its $100 Negative Balance Buffer, which is an overdraft service similar to Chime’s SpotMe that allows you to overdraft up to $100 with no fees. This program has requirements, such as having a positive account balance and direct depositing at least $100 per month.
Truist’s traditional savings account has a very poor APY of 0.01% APY — much lower than the national average and the best accounts in the market. We commonly see savings accounts with APYs around 5%, and the national average is 0.42% APY, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Truist isn’t a free bank. It charges a monthly maintenance fee on almost all its accounts, with some offering the ability to waive it. While most traditional brick-and-mortar banks are known to have fees, plenty of other banks skip it.
Its checking accounts lack the extra perks we see with other top checking accounts, as they aren’t interest-bearing or offer cashback rewards. Other banks and online banking platforms like SoFi® and Upgrade offer savings accounts with rates from up to 3.80% to 4.02% APY. These options also offer high-yield checking accounts, cashback rewards and no monthly service fees.
Truist has two personal checking options:
Of the two accounts, the Truist One Checking is the better option. It comes with more perks, but it’s only worth it if you can waive the $12 monthly fee, which you can do in one of five ways:
Truist’s personal savings accounts aren’t the best we’ve seen, as they offer very low APYs.
Truist offers two personal savings accounts and one money market account.
Waive the $5 monthly service fee for the Truist One Savings account in one of four ways:
Truist CD details:
While rates depend on your amount and state, we saw APYs up to 5% for seven-month terms, which is in line with top competitors.
Truist also offers a multitude of other accounts:
Narrow down other checking, savings and CDs by features, APYs, opening deposits and more. Select Compare on up to four options for a closer comparison.
The Finder Score crunches over 300 checking accounts from hundreds of financial institutions. It takes into account the product's monthly fees, overdraft fees, opening deposit, customer support options, ATM network and features — this gives you a simple score out of 10.
To provide a Score, Finder’s banking experts analyze hundreds of checking accounts against what we consider is the best option: no monthly fees, no overdraft fees, a large ATM network of 50,000 or more, additional features outside of typical banking services, and the optional perk of earning interest. Accounts that are nearly free to maintain and use are scored the highest, while accounts with costly fees and few features are scored the lowest.
The Finder Score crunches over 250 savings accounts from hundreds of financial institutions. It takes into account the product's interest rate, fees, opening deposit and features - this gives you a simple score out of 10.
To provide a Score, Finder’s banking experts analyze hundreds of savings accounts against FDIC-reported national averages as a baseline. Accounts with rates well over the national average are scored the highest, while accounts with rates well below are scored low.
The Finder Score analyzes hundreds of CDs from more than 100 institutions. It takes into account the product's interest rate for available terms and opening deposit requirements - this gives you a simple score out of 10.
Different banks and credit unions offer CDs for various lengths of time, ranging from as short as seven days to as long as 20 years. For our ratings, we consider the term lengths that the FDIC uses in its monthly updates on national rates.
If a bank or credit union doesn’t offer a CD for a specific term used by the FDIC, we don’t penalize it: Instead, we simply don’t rate it. Each of the standard term lengths has its own APY rating based on the FDIC’s average rates.
Truist has garnered quite a bit of customer feedback. On its Better Business Bureau (BBB) profile, it holds the highest rating of A+ and has a 1.09 customer star rating.
Truist has seen a considerable number of BBB complaints — over 4,000 in the last three years. For customer reviews, Truist actively responds to each individual review in attempts to resolve any issues, which is likely what gives it that A+ BBB rating. There aren’t any specific trends to call out in reviews, but many customers cite issues contacting customer service to resolve issues, and many reviews are unique circumstances.
Truist’s Trustpilot profile is unclaimed, but the profile has a poor rating of 1.1 stars out of 5, with over 1,000 reviews. Many customers point out issues with their accounts after the merger in 2019, which is common but still unfortunate for customers whose accounts were managed poorly during the merger.
Overall, Truist actively responds to BBB complaints and reviews, something we don’t see that often. But the majority of its reviews are poor, and while common for banks, Truist has very few positive reviews.
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